Christ has died.

    I am lost in memory,
    in the traditions of my family and faith,
    in a past that both comforts and cuts,
    that hounds and heals.
    But the past is necessarily
    the corpse of what was:
    gone,
    though not always forgotten
    (mercifully, sometimes so),
    but, nonetheless, dead.
    Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

    I struggle to exist here and now,
    to be present
    to what is present,
    what presents itself
    in this day,
    in this moment.
    Here and now
    is Christ risen,
    and that is all we have,
    this,
    now.

Christ shall come again.

    I fall so easily
    into the narcotic pull
    of what might yet be,
    hope that numbs the now.
    Yet something is to come,
    which, when it comes,
    will be the new and holy now.
    Trust.
    Be now, but trust the then.

Ah,
it is all
such a mystery.

Text and image © 2013 by Dirk deVries. All
rights reserved.